May 15, 2010: The Garden, Mid-May

Would you believe I now have 39 tomatoes planted, with four more to go? I have two more spots in the garden, and two more pots, then I'm out of space for any more.

Two pots left to plant with dwarf tomatoes.

I'll be planting two of these into the garden, and I'll have to find homes for the rest of them.

My neighbor, Pat, bought a juicer. She says we're going to make lots of tomato juice this year. I'll be wanting quite a bit of salsa, too. If all these plants live, I'm sure there will be more than enough tomatoes for the two of us!

Mr. Granny's Gartenperle (top), and another of the same variety (bottom), have quite a few blossoms. Other early bloomers are three Sibirskij Stambovyj and two Minigolds. It looks as though we may have early tomatoes this year. Last year I harvested my first tomato on July 16.

The cold weather didn't hurt the tomato plants at all. I've often read that one shouldn't plant them until the nights are consistently in the 50s or higher, but these went through nightly temperatures ranging from the mid thirties to low forties, and they not only survived, but they grew at least 3" and thrived! Some of them had a bed sheet thrown over them at night, a few of the smaller ones got milk jugs covering them, but the majority just braved the cold, stark naked. Those in the 5-gallon buckets and large containers fared better than the ones planted directly in the ground.

It never ceases to amaze me when I look at the garden photos I take at least weekly. It seems like everything grows so slowly, until I compare pictures and see how far it's come in just two months.

I'm getting some nice lettuces, now that I've protected them all from the birds. I have plants in several stages of growth, from those sown inside in March, to those sown outside in April, and new seedlings started in soil blocks about every two weeks. As I harvest or thin the plants, I replace them with more seedlings. The remaining radishes will be harvested this week, and a tray of Drunken Woman lettuces will be on hand to take their place in the garden. Those ugly, squiggly, light colored things in the center photo are alfalfa pellets. They work great as a non burning fertilizer for the greens, but they aren't very photogenic!

It's difficult to tell the actual size of the lettuces by looking at a photo, but the larger ones have leaves about the same size as my hand.

The Gonzales cabbages are growing well. Silver curly ribbon helps keep the birds away. Notice the one on the right, with no silver ribbon, has ragged, bird eaten outer leaves.

The broccoli and cabbages elsewhere in the garden have been royally munched on by birds.

Strawberries

Raspberries

Potatoes

Peas

Hot Peppers

Corn. I have three of these half barrels of corn. Each is supposed to have seven plants, but I accidentally thinned out an extra one from this barrel. Not to worry, I transplanted a few of the thinnings into the squash patch, where they are growing very well. I guess that makes my squash patch a "two sisters" garden!

The cilantro has bolted. I'm hoping the blossoms bring in more bees to this side of the garden.

Last fall, Cheryl sent me some bulbs from her gorgeous yellow lilies. I planted them next to the garden shed, and protected them from curious pups by surrounding them with folding wire fences. Annie managed to go over the fence, dig up all the bulbs, and scatter them out in the grass. I gathered up all I could find and, since we were getting ready to leave for AZ for the winter, I just plopped the bulbs into a big pot and covered them with potting soil. When we got back home this spring, I removed them from the pot and planted them by the back fence, with a taller wire fence barrier to keep Annie out. They are surviving, thriving and getting ready to bloom! Notice the birds have nipped off the tips of the leaves. I'm beginning to hate birds :-(

I hope this new flower garden grows well. I have blue morning glories to climb the fence as a background for pink Sweet Williams, light yellow lilies, scattered seeds of snap dragons and zinnias in mixed colors (that may or may not grow, I'm only seeing a few seedlings popping up), hollyhocks in pink and white and Shasta daisies. Nearby I've planted blue bachelor button seeds in a container, and have tall cosmos that will be shades of pink in another container. There are marigolds and white alyssum scattered here and there through the garden, as well as several volunteer borage plants. I also scattered seeds of forget-me-nots, but I'm not seeing anything there yet. This will be the most flowers I've ever planted in with my vegetables, so I hope the birds and the butterflies will feel welcome here.

The prettiest flower in Granny's garden.

21 comments:

Your lettuces make my mouth water, everything looks so lush. I'm going to try your siver ribbon trick as we have gigantic pigeons. Your flower selection sounds lovely and the wee one is Queen of the May!

Wow Granny, Everything in your garden looks Happy and Healthy! It looks like your bird barrier is working well. My favorite pic is the prettiest flower in the garden....what a beautiful smile!! She is precious!

Is the Wiz, I need to have that stuff hanging all over my garden! I've never had such a bird problem before.

********Robin, why do I feel badly about hating birds when I'm writing to "Robin"? LOL! The netting works great. Too bad I can't enclose the entire garden in it.

That smile is her fake smile. You put her in front of a camera and tell her "smile", and she turns it on. I had cuter pictures where she wasn't posing, but the flowers didn't show up as well in them. She's a real sweetie pie, though. A darned good kisser ;-)

*******Ribbit, maybe they went from cold to hot too quickly? I've been tickling these blossoms, and they seem to be pretty firmly set, but I should know soon if any fruit will develop from them. I moved Mr. Granny's plant out near the raspberry patch, where it will be near the bees.

********Prue, thank you. If I have anything like last year's tomato crop, my counters and windowsill will be covered with tomatoes by the beginning of August! I had too many last year, and I've planted more than twice that this year. It's just that almost all my seeds germinated and grew, and I can't just throw them away...they're my babies!

********Kelly, I've only begun having salads from the lettuce. It's all been picked to feed my rabbit so far! I snag some of it to add to my sandwiches, but Cookie gets the biggest share. Gotta keep that old guy healthy ;-)

********EG, I have never had this much trouble with them before. I should buy a bunch of fake owls and snakes and construct a scarecrow, I guess.

Are the birds regular song birds or do you have some visiting quail? Quail are adorable to watch but are devastating to a garden. I am having some bird problems this year too - ate all of my first seeding of peas (had to replant the entire bed!) and they have nipped off a bunch of the young cascadia pea plants which I did not replant - so I have a lot of gaps in my snap pea bed.

Kitsap, they are mostly sparrows. I can look out my kitchen window or sit on my patio and watch them destroy a leaf in the matter of seconds. The two that are nesting in the birdhouse now are the biggest offenders....flying from lettuce/cabbage leaf to birdhouse, all day long. We also have many quail coming through, but they seem to want the radishes more than anything else. That's OK, as what they don't eat the wire worms do. The quail have teeny-tiny babies with them right now, so it's worth losing a few veggies just to watch them. I got a good video of them this week, but I think it would be too small to see anything on the blog. I could try, though.

Lookin good! I love the way my tomatoes look now in their pots, but I know they will be staging a jungle takeover any week now, they are putting on several inches a day it seems! And definitely the prettiest flower in the garden!!!

You've got the greenest thumb. For all the abuse those bulbs went through (including being dug up at the "wrong" time of the year) looks like you're going to have at least one bloom on each plant. Yours are doing better than mine did the first year.

That's a pretty picture with Little Miss A. I'm going to make a request. She's got such pretty blue eyes, so we need to see her in a little blue T with blue flowers in the background (maybe those volunteer borage plants).

Erin, I'm sure I'll be regretting the pot grown tomatoes. If they stay as small as "Patio" did, they will be great, but if they grow like my (supposed) Tumbling Tom did last year, I'm in trouble.

********This Growing Obsession, I've not had many problems with the squirrels. Annie and Otto just won't allow them in the yard. The barking just about drives me crazy, but it's funny watching two short legged dogs try to get to a squirrel that's running atop a 6' high fence.

I can not imagine growing that many tomatoes. I've got my "volunteer" tomatoes, which are ripening nicely, btw, and 2 cherry tomatoes in the SWCs, plus 2 San Marzano, 2 Rutgers, and 1 cherry in the garden. I'm worried that will be too many! Unlike zucchini, however, you can always find takers for fresh garden tomatoes...The flowers sound lovely; I second the request for blue t-shirt and blue flowers. Unquestionably the prettiest flower in the garden! Absolutely precious...

So far it is keeping the melons chew-free...knock on wood. Didn't completely discourage the cabbage worms on my lettuce, though. Knocks them off, but doesn't prevent new ones or get them all. I was already tasting the salad with all that lettuce and my ripe tomatoes until those little buggers ate my lettuce first!